Tag Archives: A Broken Consort

I’m sad to see Amie Street go. It was an interesting model for online music sales: all music began free and the price of each track rose according to its popularity. There was an active social network that allowed users to follow each other’s interests as well as artists and labels. And most importantly for me, anyone could upload music to sell on the site, which led to an interesting community of music lovers and music makers. (How often did I log on to discover the frighteningly prolific Crimson Razorback or Robert Waddington had posted yet another track?)

I had two recordings available on Amie Street: Maps and one 4 one. At the time Amie Street closed down, Maps was selling for a whopping $1.15 and one 4 one was currently at $0.45. Neither record earned enough royalties to warrant a check from Amie Street, but given a long enough tail I could imagine a dollar or two coming in every so often. Neither is currently available on amazon.com. For online distribution of my music, it looks like I’ll rely more and more on bandcamp.

When I heard the news that Amie Street would be closing I did a quick inventory of the music I purchased on the site: (in order, roughly, from most recent to least recent purchases)

Denseland

A Broken Consort

Prefuse 73

Charlie Barnet

Animal Collective

Grizzly Bear

Four Tet

20 Minute Loop

Sunn 0)))

Kathryn Williams

Dirty Projectors

Sebadoh

Collections of Colonies of Bees

Faron Young

John Berndt

Katy Moffatt

Erik Friedlander

Lou Reed

Citymusic Cleveland

Nico Muhly

The Cave Singers

Matmos

Mouse on Mars

Michael Bullock

Clogs

Charlie Hunter (the banjo player)

Hem

Twelve 20 Six

The Be Good Tanyas

Cecil Taylor

And an untold number of other artists whose work I heard but didn’t keep around. It sounds cruel, but the point of a site like amie street is exactly this kind of exposure–which is likely what I’ll miss the most.